Education is the priority for social justice, improved equality and a strong economy

This is the full text of the speech given by Scottish Labour’s spokesperson on education Iain Gray to Scottish Labour conference. 

Conference,

We meet this morning to debate how we should invest in our future and that takes us to the very heart of what this party is about.

Because if we believe anything it is that every single one of us has the power to shape our world, our future and our destiny, and that every single one of us denied that opportunity, held back by poverty, by injustice or by discrimination diminishes that future for us all.

Because together we’re stronger.

Our party and our movement has always believed that if there is a key to unlock that potential of a better future, that key is education. Our founder Keir Hardie never saw the inside of a classroom, working as he did from eight years old – but his understanding of the power of learning to liberate meant he never stopped studying at home, in evening classes, in his union.

That union movement was founded on the belief that it is organisation and education together which places the power to transform society in the hands of working people.
Nelson Mandela said “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

That is why, in power, Labour has always made education a priority.

And you can be sure that with Kez as our leader it will always be our top priority. For Kez, education is the social justice priority, it is the equality priority and it is the economic priority.

We speak often of our pride in the creation of the NHS and rightly so. We pay tribute to the nurses doctors and other staff who make it what it is and rightly so. We rededicate ourselves year on year to protect it from those who would cut it, neglect it, or sell it off and so we must.

But conference, we should be just as proud of our schools and colleges and universities. Proud of our great educational reforms, proud of the teachers and lecturers and support staff who make it what it is, and determined to defend it against those who neglect or misuse it.

Just as Labour took divided, divisive and unequal healthcare provision and turned it into the NHS, it was Labour which ended the divisive and failing two tier system of schooling. It was Labour which finally put an end to the 11 plus in schools and made our schools places where young people come together to learn rather than somewhere to divide them into the favoured and the failed.

Let no one tell you that reform has not worked either. Before comprehensive schools 75 per cent of young people left school without a single qualification to show for it. Now that figure is two per cent (at SCQF level 3 or better)

That is the difference a Labour vision can make, a vision which believes in investing in every child’s future, not just the chosen few.

That vision changed my life – the Labour governments of the sixties and seventies did not just open up schools they opened up our universities too so that people like me could be the first in their families to go.

We must never take these gains for granted, we must always be prepared to defend them Through the long Tory years of the eighties and nineties, it was Labour administrations in regions like Strathclyde and Lothian who protected our schools from the worst of cuts, and allowed the reforms to continue – from transforming the exam system to banning the belt.

And now we must again defend our schools and colleges and universities from those who are letting them down.

And that means the SNP.

For ten years they have run our education system – although it took them eight to even pretend it was a priority – and what has happened?

Literacy and numeracy results in decline

Maths and science achievement in decline

Enrolment and attainment in S4 both falling

Higher pass rates falling too.

And in colleges – 150,000 students squeezed out altogether

And most scandalous of all is that your success at school doesn’t depend on how smart you are, how hard you work or even what school you go to – it depends on how much your parents earn – something that hasn’t improved in ten years. The richest are still four times as likely to go to university as the poorest.

The Scottish government knows something is wrong – how can we tell? Because it appointed its top minister – John Swinney to education. And John has been busy – he’s launched an improvement framework and a delivery plan and a STEM strategy and a performance improvement plan and a governance review.

He has a cunning plan to centralise our school system – because that went so well with colleges and the police force.

He is reintroducing testing to our primary schools, and toying with asking parents to run schools or even opt out of council control altogether.

Because those ideas worked so well when the Tories tried them out thirty years ago.

The truth is John Swinney cannot fix education – because he is literally his own worst enemy. John Swinney is the problem not the answer.
For eight years as Finance Secretary, John Swinney cut education budgets year on year.

He cut over 4,000 teachers in our schools andover 1,000 support staff. He cut 150,000 students out of colleges, cut university budgets and slashed grants for their students.
Now John Swinney the Education Secretary is wrestling with his own legacy and he’s losing.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings John Swinney the independence campaigner threatens education with a whole new £15bn shortfall in public spending and cuts the likes of which we have never seen.

Our schools don’t need another divisive independence referendum from the SNP, they need the government to be getting on with the day job.
Our schools don’t need more reviews or frameworks or plans.

They need more money and more teachers and more support staff and they need that now.

Conference, until we have a government in Holyrood willing to use the powers that parliament now has to stop Tory cuts and start reinvesting in education again, we are holding back opportunities for our young people.Labour would use the powers of the Scottish Parliament to invest in our children’s future by stopping the cuts to the local services we all rely on.

But just as Labour-led councils defended our schools against Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Forsyth in the past, it is Labour-led councils which are now the best defence of our schools and our children’s future against the SNP in Holyrood.

For the sake of our schools and our future we must see as many Labour councillors elected and re-elected in May. Councillors who will stand up for their local communities and defend their local schools not SNP patsies who will only defend the government and sacrifice local services because of an obsession with independence. Only Labour can stop the SNP, stop cuts and stop a second independence referendum, at this election.

For this is a long game. A century since Labour formed with education as well as organisation as our watchwords. Fifty years since we ended the divisiveness of the eleven plus and transformed our schools. Forty years since we fought and defeated Tory attacks on our schools.

There is work still to do – to complete comprehensive education through the final years of secondary. To recreate parity of esteem between academic and so called vocational achievement. To close that gap between the richest and the rest, at primary one, at Highers and in university.

Let’s start by rediscovering our pride in Labour’s record on education, just as we are proud of our NHS. Let’s support the workforce and the pupils in every one of our schools, just as we defend and support our healthcare workers and their patients.

As one young women, Malala Yousafzai, who was ready to die for her right to go to school said: let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality.